Workmen's advocate., 1887-01-15

Idea would be in direct contradiction to all the laws of economy. We have al ready seen that the modern form of in- dustry always tends to the displacement of the more complex and the higher kinds of employment, by those which are more simple and subordinate.
 How then could crowd of laborers who are thrown out of one branch of industry by machinery, find refuge in another, without having to content themselves with a lower position and worse pay:
 The laborers who are employed in the manufacture of machinery itself have been instanced as an exception. As soon as a desire arises and demand begins in an industry for more machinery, it is said that there must necessarily be an increase in the number of machines, and therefore in the manufacture of machines, and therefore in the employment of la- borers in this manufacture; and the laborers who are employed in this branch of industry will be skilled, and indeed even educated laborers.
 Ever since the year 1S4O this conten. tion, which even before that time was only half true, has lost all its spacious color, For the machines which are en- ployed in the manufacture of machinery have been quite as numerous as those used in the manufacture of cotton; and the laborers who are employed in pro- ducing machines, instead of being highly educated, have only been able to play the part of utterly unskilled machines themselves.
 But in the place of the man who has been dismissed by the machine perhaps three children and one woman are en- ployed to work it. And was it not nec- essary before that the mans wages should suffice for the support of his wife and his children? Was not the mini mum of wages necessarily sufficient for the maintenance and propagation of the race of laborers? There is no difference, except that now the lives of four times as many laborers as before are used up in order to secure the support of one laborer's family.
 To repeat our deductions: the faster productive capital increases, the more does the division of labor and the en- ployment of machinery extend. The more the division of labor and the em- ployment of machinery extend, so much the more does competition increase among the laborers, and so much the more do their average wages dwindle.
 And besides, the laboring class is re- cruited from the higher strata of society; or else there falls headlong into it a crowd of small manufacturers and small pro- prietors, who thenceforth have nothing better to do than to stretch out their arms by the side of those of the laborers. And thus the forest of arms outstretched by those who are entreating for work becomes ever denser and the arms them selves grow ever leaner.
 That the small manufacturer cannot survive in contest whose first condi- tion is production on continually in- creasing scale, that is, that he cannot be at once both large and small manu- facturer, is self-evident.
 That the interest on capital declines in the same proportion as the amount of capital increases and extends, and that therefore the small capitalist can no longer live on his interest but must ioin the ranks of the workers and increase the number of the proletariat-a this requires no further exemplification.
 Finally, in the proportion in which the capitalists are compelled by the causes here sketched out to exploit on an ever increasing scale yet more gigantic means of production, and with this object to set in motion all the mainsprings of credit, in the same proportion is there an in- crease of those earthquakes wherein the business world can only secure it's own existence by the sacrifice of portion of its wealth, its products, and even its powers of production to the gods of the world below-in word, crises increase They become at once more frequent and more violent; because in the same pro- portion in which the amount of produc- tion and thererore the demand for an extension of the market, increases, the market of the world continually con-